Verifying the identity of a speaker in a communication may be useful in a variety of different contexts to protect against fraudulent or unauthorized access to information and/or secure areas. As one specific example, banks and other financial institutions receive numerous telephone calls from customers requesting assistance, inquiring about account information and/or asking to conduct a transaction. Prior to providing and/or allowing access to confidential information, or performing any transaction on behalf of a customer, the bank may need to confirm that the caller is in fact the customer whose identity is being asserted.
Conventional techniques for verifying the identify of a speaker typically involve asking one or more challenge questions to the speaker that are unlikely to be answered correctly by an imposter. For example, one or a combination of birth date, current address, social security number, mother's maiden name, etc., may be posed as challenge questions to verify that a speaker is the person whose identity is being asserted. If the speaker can satisfactorily answer one or more challenge questions, the speaker is deemed to be the person alleged.
Another technique for verifying the identity of a speaker involves using characteristics of the speaker's voice. For example, speech obtained from a person whose identity has been verified or is otherwise known may be analyzed to extract characteristics of the person's voice. The extracted characteristics may be stored as a “voice print” that generally distinguishes the person from the speech of others. A “voice print” refers herein to any type of model or collection of data that captures one or more identifying characteristics of a person's voice. Typically, a voice print is obtained during a process referred to as enrollment wherein a user is prompted to utter a particular enrollment utterance, which is then analyzed to extract characteristics of the speaker's voice. However, a voice print may also be obtained using incidental speech obtained from a user, for example, speech obtained from a user during a dialog with an agent after the identity of the user has been verified using another technique (e.g., challenge questions, password, etc.).
An enterprise, such as a financial institution, health care provider, etc., may store voice prints of its customers to facilitate the prevention of impostors gaining access to confidential information and/or performing unauthorized transactions. In particular, when a speaker asserts the identity of a particular person, the voiceprint of that person may be accessed and compared to characteristics of the speech of the present speaker. When there is a match, the speaker is presumed to be the person alleged. Otherwise, the speaker may be subjected to further inquiry, such as one or more challenge questions, or may be denied authorization outright.